


(and it feels) like wasted youth

by mimosaeyes



Category: Countdown to Countdown (Webcomic)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Developing Relationship, Fluff, M/M, Post-Apocalypse, slight angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-28
Updated: 2017-03-28
Packaged: 2018-10-12 02:20:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,674
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10479912
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mimosaeyes/pseuds/mimosaeyes
Summary: En route to the camp in Oregon, Lillium makes pop culture references and Iris explores an abandoned 99 cent store. Also, nail polish is involved at some point.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Wasted Youth by Sody and Martin Luke Brown, which I’ve had stuck in my head recently.

“What do you know about — before?” 

Lillium is wobbling along a thin plank of wood lying in the grass, and takes a moment to answer. If he’s surprised at Iris’s sudden question after several minutes of reticence, he doesn’t show it. “I know that there was quite a bit more of it than those scientists taught you about.”

His boot slips then, scuffs in the sand. His outstretched arm nearly smacks Iris in the face as he instinctively overcompensates in a desperate bid to regain balance. Iris quirks a singularly unimpressed eyebrow at him.

Lillium shrugs and bends down to pick up the offending plank, missing as he does the minute shift of Iris’s expression into something like endearment. Then even a shade of concern, as Lillium pauses to flex his ankle evaluatively.

“If you hurt your foot out here pulling some dumb stunt... I’m not helping you limp to this camp of yours in Oregon,” Iris warns, and if his tone falls somewhat short of reproving, it’s more than offset by the return of his scowl like armour.

The other boy pouts, falling back into step with Iris, and addresses his newly salvaged companion. “Guess I only have you to rely on, Plank, ol’ Buddy, you. That’s a reference, by the way,” he adds as an aside to Iris. “In case I didn’t enunciate the capital letters clearly enough.”

Iris looks out across the flat landscape, to the endless horizon, as though seeking fortitude. “Of course the only person I know out in this apocalyptic wasteland is insane.”

It’s not exactly a wasteland, though; not like the images that word conjures to mind. Once out of the densely-built urban areas, instead of great bogs of decomposing vegetation and bright yellow canisters of radioactive waste, they’ve walked through mostly deserted, placid country. Past hulking shells of cars long since stripped by survivors for parts or for the hell of it. Lone trees so twisted and knotted they seem to have been jammed, ham-fisted, into the unrelenting ground. All the miscellaneous detritus of civilisation: crumbling bridges around which the terrain has morphed so as to render useless, fallen fences from which remain only lengths of wire and random planks like the one Lillium has stumbled upon. At some point, even a shed of sorts, overgrown with flowered vines, away from which Lillium promptly tugged Iris, pointing out that what he took as a sentimental image of nature reclaiming the land, was probably more along the lines of some poor infected’s final resting place.

The colours, though. Iris has seen pictures, of course: archival evidence of the world outside as it used to be. But the kinds of documentation humanity privileged enough to preserve are dry, dead. Nobody accustomed to the sunset as an everyday phenomenon would think to immortalise it for a future generation of kids stuck indoors, peering out of high windows at the spectacular oranges and purples that stemmed, soberingly, from decades of photochemical smog accumulated in the atmosphere. Over time, Iris’s memories of the outside world have bled colour; some of it, onto his canvases.

When Iris next surfaces from his reverie, they have put even more distance between themselves and the latent horror of his last hours in Washington State Lab, and Lillium is going on about finding a marker to draw a face onto his plank. Or better still, he enthuses, a coconut husk to paint on in blood, name Wilson, and anthropomorphise in earnest.

“Where would you even find—” Iris starts to say, and then stops short. They’ve wandered up to a ramshackle row of buildings, most too dilapidated to safely enter. Right at the end of it hunches what used to be a 99 cent store. The name emblazoned on the front tickles at Iris’s memory, but whatever associations it dredges up come reluctantly and murkily to mind.

“Nicked your bag from there,” Lillium boasts, pointing with the plank. His ebullience is just the thing to yank Iris’s attention back to the real world. “The façade looks run-down, so it’s escaped the brunt of looting. C’mon.”

Lillium grabs his hand and pulls him along. In the shock of realising he’s almost missed the security of Lillium’s fingers crushing his, Iris lets him.

“Can we afford this detour?” he asks, when he’s standing in the middle of the musty store, wide-eyed and somewhat recovered. “The sun’s going down.”

Iris reaches forward to rub the dust from a tin. There are empty cartons littering the floor, and glossy leaflets printed in designs that were once probably eye-catching. So this is the world as it was before the outbreak — in microcosm and a shadow of its former self, but nevertheless authentic, real somehow. By his judgement, at least. Given that he’s never been able to remember life before the outbreak and the lab, he’s hardly the most reliable authority on that.

Lillium’s been silent for several beats too long. When Iris glances up, he meets a gaze that’s already trained on him, as well as a look of obscure satisfaction.

“What?”

“You asked about before, and well,” Lillium clears his throat and sings the rest of the sentence, “I can show you the world.”

At Iris’s deadpan look, Lillium starts to explain, but he interrupts him shortly. “I understood that reference, I’m just refusing to process the implication.”

“Oh. Well, glad to know that cheesy Disney musicals will still be around at the end of the world.”

Iris snorts in acknowledgement, turning a corner and moving in between some of the still-standing shelves. These used to be fully stocked. There are marks on the tiled floor where people long ago tracked mud into the store, or scuffed their sneakers. If he closes his eyes he can almost imagine coming to a place like this. Surely he must have, at some point. With family, even. That’s what people did, isn’t it?

Lillium peeks at him from the other side of the shelves. “It’s cute, watching you all bright-eyed and curious. Like a babe seeing the world for the first time.”

“Shut up,” Iris mutters, but without heat, because there’s no real barb in Lillium’s words. It’s not like when the other kids would bully him.

For a moment it seems as though Lillium is about to make another comment, possibly along the same lines of what he said back at the lab. _You know… you’re taking this a lot better than I thought you would…_ Instead he veers off to nudge some bouncy balls around with a sort of sheepish shuffle. 

Iris explores the place somewhat aimlessly, fiddling with broken doors and becoming briefly engrossed by some cheap sunglasses. They try on those with impunity, although Iris replaces them conscientiously, and carefully avoids looking at his reflection in the cracked strip of mirror at the top of the stand.

They march around like kings, lonely monarchs at the end of the earth.

Lillium is just cackling over a pair of googly-eye glasses when Iris spots the pamphlet jammed into one of the slots. Gingerly, he removes and unfolds it, raking over the words and pictures. It’s an essentially worthless catalogue of weekly promotions, the kind of thing shoppers would have tossed in the trash without a second thought, but Iris actually starts reading it, increasingly hungry to learn about the time and place it is an artifact of. Call it solidarity. Iris, too, is an unknowing artifact of a bygone era.

After a while Lillium leans in to look at what he’s so absorbed in. “That one’s quite fetching,” he remarks, jabbing with the plank — yes, he’s still holding onto that — at a picture of some shimmery purple nail polish in a bottle. 

“For Begonia?” Iris asks, somewhat guardedly. He’s sure he’s misunderstood Lillium’s casual air.

He receives a strange look in reply. “No, for you. Since you seem interested, I mean. Besides, that’s not her colour.”

There’s a complete guilelessness in Lillium’s eyes. Iris’s hackles have gone up instinctively, his self-consciousness the result of years of childish taunts, but now, watching Lillium’s expression for the slightest hint of trickery, Iris deliberately lets the tension leak out of his shoulders. He consciously tells himself: boys can wear nail polish; makeup too if they so wish. Never mind if his tormentors had notions of masculinity so regressive (and repressive) as to be actually archaic. They’re dead and gone now, anyway… 

He looks again at Lillium, imagines him carrying him out of the lobby after he fell and lost consciousness. Pictures him locking the door, taking his key and going back to check for survivors, hair wild and bright amid the carnage.

Then, he reaches into the pamphlet, and pulls out the bottle of nail polish.

He barely even thinks about it, unlike all the other times he’s used his power over the last few years. It’s always been with him, a part of him, merely becoming more and more fraught with fear and consternation with every successive freak-out under test conditions. Iris hasn’t been using it on his own time at all; it would be tempting fate to risk setting off the fire alarms and having everyone know what a failure he was.

Lillium blinks. “There’s ordering off the catalogue, and then there’s ordering _out_ of the catalogue, I guess,” he quips.

Triumphant now, Iris holds out the bottle until Lillium reaches out a hand for him to deposit it into. He doesn’t know why he gives it to him. As a trophy, maybe? Or a thank-you? Whatever. Maybe his power isn’t a blight after all. Maybe he can use it and not have to cringe and wince, wondering if it will betray him.

“Does this mean you’d like me to do your nails for you?” Lillium asks after a moment. “Because firstly, yes, but secondly, this means we need a magic carpet.” 

Iris can’t help it; his lips quirk into a lopsided grin. “There were some snazzy bath towels back in Aisle 3,” he proffers. Lillium’s face lights up like a sunrise.

**Author's Note:**

> I cannot recommend this webcomic enough. It’s got beautiful and atmospheric art, and fantastic writing to boot. Check it out [here](http://ctccomic.com/comic/1/)!


End file.
